Bio Menace released as freeware!

[Joe Siegler]

We at Apogee / 3D Realms want to wish you a safe, happy Christmas / Hanukah / whatever you celebrate season. To that, we're repeating something we've done in the past - releasing something as a "Christmas present" to our fans. This time we dip back back back into the archives....



Thirteen years ago, our company was heavily into the old sidescroller market. We had successes with games like Commander Keen, the original Duke Nukem, as well as Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and plenty of other titles. However, in 1993, we released one based on the Keen 4 game engine - this game was called Bio Menace. While it wasn't the runaway hit that Duke Nukem was, Bio Menace was a very successful game for its time. It stayed as a product in our line for many years, until being discontinued awhile back (mostly for technical reasons). However, now we're here to bring the game back to you - as freeware.



Continuing in our series of freeware releases from the past, Bio Menace is now available for you to download in a full registered form. This download contains all three episodes, and you can get it from our FTP site here.



In doing the work for the Bio Menace release, we managed to track down the original Bio Menace guy, Jim Norwood. Jim also worked with us on 1997's Shadow Warrior (also with another of our guys from back then, Frank Maddin).



Jim had a few words to say about the freeware release of Bio Menace..



'The good ol' days' - that's what I always say when I am referring to the times when a one person with a vision, some TLC, and a lot of time on their hands, could sit down and write a cool PC title from start to finish without a sixty million dollar budget and a team of one hundred.



I wore every hat while working on Bio Menace. From designer, to artist, to programmer - I was a veritable army of one (at least in my own mind). Alas, those days are long behind us. I have continued to be a part of the game industry as it has matured at a frightening pace over the last fifteen years, and these days, one needs be a lot more focused to find a niche among the mega-teams it now takes to create a competitive, cross-platform title.



....little games like Bio Menace still have merit as a learning tool on the road to gaining the coveted knowledge of the 'big picture' of game development that any development house worth their salt will look for in a solid candidate. Perhaps making Bio Menace freeware will take you one step further along that journey. That is my hope...



We've also got some words from Scott Miller, the founder of Apogee on Bio Menace...

Bio Menace is an interesting project for several reasons, not the least of which is that Jim Norwood created practically every asset on his own, from game code, to art, to sound, to level design. The one significant area not created by Norwood is the game's engine. It was created by Id Software, and was the engine original used for the second trilogy of Commander Keen games, starting with "Goodbye, Galaxy."



Because Bio Menace was a one-man show, it took close to two years to create, and by the time of it's release it was somewhat dated as a 16-color EGA game. Still, it sold pretty well, and allowed Norwood to pursue his next major game with us, Shadow Warrior, teaming up with Frank Madden, and using the Build engine.



Both of them have more to say in the readme file that comes with the freeware release, so make sure to check out what they say, including an interesting story from Scott on how id Software helped out with the creation of this title. We have a few more Bio Menace tidbits on our website, including our archived page of information on the game, as well as some game maps on every level from all three episodes (done by Apogee fan Frenkel). Check it all out!



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For a complete list of our freeware releases (and our other games), check out our games page, which has a section on freeware releases, and what is available besides Bio Menace.



As one final Christmas present, we want to preview something we're going to be doing starting early next year. When doing research on Bio Menace, we decided to seek out quite a few of our developers from days gone by. We're going to be doing an interview series with quite a few of them based on their games, their time spent with Apogee, and how they see the industry today. Some of their answers might surprise you. Some of the names we have lined up for this series are Jim Norwood (Bio Menace, Shadow Warrior), Frank Maddin (Crystal Caves, Shadow Warrior), Mike Maynard (Blake Stone), Peder Jungck (Secret Agent), Karen Crowther Chun (Math & Word Rescue), as well as folks like Tom Hall & John Romero and many more. If you're a fan of the old school days of our company, you definitely will not want to miss this series when we start it sometime early next year. Keep your eyes peeled for more on that.



Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us here at Apogee / 3D Realms!

[ADM]

Nice one! I'm glad to see 3DR releasing the old classics like this

Great job!

[Phait]

And next year, Duke 3D.

[DOSGuy]

I doubt it. Not yet, anyway. But there are still a lot of great discontinued Apogee games. The next time you see a star, wish really, really hard!

[jimbob]

so i guessed right? coolies \o/

and what a nice christmass present it is

[JR Ewing]

Sweet! My thanks to those who were involved in making this possible.

[Joe Siegler]

Phait said:
And next year, Duke 3D.

Most definitely not. I don't know why people keep missing this..

We will not release as freeware anything we still sell.

[The Puppet Master]

Great Joe, now I feel bad that I didn't get you anything for chrismas this year. But anyways, Merry Christmas to one and all at 3DR.

[Eddy Willson]

YAY! This is one of my all-time favourite Apogee games, and I'm over the moon about its freeware release, what a great Christmas Present!

[DOSGuy]

I can finally blast bad guys without that delay screen! I really enjoyed playing through Episode 1 the first time, but I didn't find a lot of replay value because of the screen that nagged me to pay for the game, which I couldn't do because it was discontinued.

So I'm definitely looking forward to playing this game again. I'm still a big fan of Major Stryker, though. I can't wait for the next time Joe has a surprise!

[8IronBob]

I remember playing Bio Menace as a shareware game about 10 years ago. However, that was when DOS was the "in" thing. Right now, I'm hoping that someone'll do a Windows port remake of Bio Menace, and make it even better than those days. That'll be cool if anyone's willing to do that. DOSBox sux with Bio Menace, and there's no way around it, unfortunately.

[DOSGuy]

Yeah, I remember playing it 10 years ago on my 486 DX 33 with 8 MB of RAM. Too bad I didn't have a credit card back then. lol

There's a patch that makes Bio Menace playable on DOSBox. I played Episode 1 from beginning to end about a month ago.

[JR Ewing]

8IronBob said:
I remember playing Bio Menace as a shareware game about 10 years ago. However, that was when DOS was the "in" thing. Right now, I'm hoping that someone'll do a Windows port remake of Bio Menace, and make it even better than those days. That'll be cool if anyone's willing to do that. DOSBox sux with Bio Menace, and there's no way around it, unfortunately.

I'm pretty sure that can only be done when the source code is released. How does DosBox suck with Bio Menace. It works great if you use the right settings. And by right settings, I mean you don't even need that patch to play the game. I'll have to dig up the thread about what settings to change to make it work without the patch.

[Joe Siegler]

8IronBob said:DOSBox sux with Bio Menace, and there's no way around it, unfortunately.

Did you actually download this and try it with the patch before saying that?

[JR Ewing]

This thread tells you how to get Bio Menace running without that patch. At least it worked for me. I'm not sure how to do this with just DOSbox alone, but using D-Fend, its easy.

[cheeseboy]

Thanks a lot. This makes a great early christmas present. Cheers!

[8IronBob]

Joe3DR said:

Did you actually download this and try it with the patch before saying that?

I was talking about the shareware version before the freeware was released. DOSBox didn't seem to agree with the BM Shareware for some strange reason, it kept crashing, it was slow, and I couldn't even start a decent game. Hopefully the freeware changes that in a hurry, either Bio Menace of SourceForge's DOSBox, etc...

[MJongo]

YAY! I love this game!

[DOSGuy]

8IronBob said:
I was talking about the shareware version before the freeware was released. DOSBox didn't seem to agree with the BM Shareware for some strange reason, it kept crashing, it was slow, and I couldn't even start a decent game.

It was crashing for me a few seconds into the first level until I found out about the patch. I've had no problems with it since.

[DOSGuy]

Hey, I was right! The camera captioning contest DID get updated today. And you all thought I was a crackpot!

[Phayzon]

\o I never bought BM, now I can play the full version!

[Frenkel]

When you finished all the levels in the three games you can make your own levels for Bio Menace with TED.

[laffer]

Cool! This is great stuff! Thanks a lot! Freeware is great

[8IronBob]

Okay, I'll see what I can do with DosBox to make this play like the old days. May actually be worth d/ling DB again to make this all come together.

[Phait]

Joe3DR said:

Most definitely not. I don't know why people keep missing this..

We will not release as freeware anything we still sell.

Yeah but I'm sure people REALLY want the more popular games such as Duke 3D.

If I was 3DR... but I'm not

[DOSGuy]

If you were 3DR you would take the 3DR booth babes to Hawaii and thank God for nerds. At least, that's what I would do.

[Yatta]

Works well enough in vanilla XP emulation for me.

[JR Ewing]

Phait said:
Yeah but I'm sure people REALLY want the more popular games such as Duke 3D.

If I was 3DR... but I'm not

Why not just buy the game then.

[Rellik66]

8IronBob said:

I was talking about the shareware version before the freeware was released. DOSBox didn't seem to agree with the BM Shareware for some strange reason, it kept crashing, it was slow, and I couldn't even start a decent game. Hopefully the freeware changes that in a hurry, either Bio Menace of SourceForge's DOSBox, etc...

the biopatch has been around for a little while, you just needed to search the dosbox forum for the proper solution

for those curious why Bio Menace has trouble with dosbox here's a quote fom the biopatch program maker:

Finster comments:

hell, those games are buggy... they do some weird things with the interrupt table (comparing things that dont make any sense). I have attached a small patch which has to be started in dosbox before one of those games are executed. it's a simple fix writing the value 0000 at the memory address 0000:0006. Works with all three bio menaces. stupid games...

[JR Ewing]

Rellik66 said:
the biopatch has been around for a little while, you just needed to search the dosbox forum for the proper solution

I guess no one read that thread I posted a link to. You don't need the patch if you simply disable the EMS and XMS memory. Thanks to <font color="orange">avator_58</font> for pointing this out on the DOSbox forums.

[Rellik66]

JR Ewing said:

I guess no one read that thread I posted a link to. You don't need the patch if you simply disable the EMS and XMS memory. Thanks to <font color="orange">avator_58</font> for pointing this out on the DOSbox forums.

I read it, but I learned about the biopatch method first.

I also noticed that the latest CVS apparantly has a more permanent fix

Anyway, unless you are using D-fend, disabling EMS/XMS isn't exactly an elegent soulution.

[Frenkel]

And without DOSBox you can run Bio Menace in Dos when you remove/disable the line DOS=UMB in your config.sys file.

[Joe Siegler]

Phait said:

Yeah but I'm sure people REALLY want the more popular games such as Duke 3D.

If I was 3DR... but I'm not

If you were 3DR, you wouldn't be in business long enough to have titles this old to release as freeware. You'd give away one of your biggest moneymakers for free.

[DOSGuy]

JR Ewing said:
I guess no one read that thread I posted a link to. You don't need the patch if you simply disable the EMS and XMS memory. Thanks to <font color="orange">avator_58</font> for pointing this out on the DOSbox forums.

I read it. It doesn't work for me. I used D-Fend to disable EMS and XMS, but the game still freezes in the first level. I have to use the patch method.

[avatar_58]

Wow....I'm mentioned before I even get to open my mouth! I do recall that disabling both of those does work, but it seems only for some people (no clue why) so the better solution is to simply download the CVS version of DOSbox instead.

Heres a link: http://ykhwong.x-y.net/page.htm

It will solve all issues with BioMenace without you having to lift a finger. If the game flashes while walking, enable "SVGA Compatibility Mode" to solve it.

Oh yeah, and a big to this announcement! One of my fav apogee games!

[JR Ewing]

Rellik66 said:
I read it, but I learned about the biopatch method first.

I also noticed that the latest CVS apparantly has a more permanent fix

Anyway, unless you are using D-fend, disabling EMS/XMS isn't exactly an elegent soulution.

No, I guess it wouldn't be. I'm also using the CVS version of DOSbox. And that is why I recommend all DOSbox users do themselves a favor and start using D-Fend, if you aren't already. For those who don't know, you can preset each individual game. That way you don't have to adjust the settings every time you open DOSbox.

And I'll even do the work for you by posting a link to D-Fend. http://members.home.nl/mabus/

[avatar_58]

JR Ewing said:
No, I guess it wouldn't be. I'm also using the CVS version of DOSbox. And that is why I recommend all DOSbox users do themselves a favor and start using D-Fend, if you aren't already. For those who don't know, you can preset each individual game. That way you don't have to adjust the settings every time you open DOSbox.

Another good thing is that you can just hotswap CVS versions of DOSbox and your Dfend settings will remain intact. However on the safe side I keep backups of previous versions because occasionally a CVS might have broken features.


EDIT: Oh and btw, in the CVS versions of dosbox you can disable/enable the XMS/EMS and change cycles, etc all from within the dosbox prompt! So if you don't want dfend its worth your while to try it.

[ultra tree 85!]

Thanks for releasing this Christmas present! I'll try it out.

[Kristian Joensen]

Thanks for the Christmas present. This seems like a very enjoyable game.

[Ras]

If you were 3DR, you wouldn't be in business long enough to have titles this old to release as freeware. You'd give away one of your biggest moneymakers for free.

<insert a pwn3d picture here, as I'm too lazy to look for one>